


Laura/Carmilla

by a_s16



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, F/F, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-23
Updated: 2014-12-23
Packaged: 2018-03-03 02:18:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2834561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_s16/pseuds/a_s16
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two part series of one-shots. Future Fic of one living life without the other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Laura

###  Laura

The pendulum of an antique wooden clock ticked as measured passing seconds. Laura sighed as she gazed towards the old face of the clock, marked with faded Roman numerals on a faded brass background, before she set down an empty mug on a small three-legged side table.

The grandfather clock was the only thing on the wall in Laura’s modest home. Purchased when traveling years ago, the aged dark wood contrasted with the faded brassy face that had beckoned itself to her. Countless time had passed since Laura had felt anything that emotionally resonated so deeply within. For her, to see this clock was to see the dark wooden floors of a college dormitory. The faded brass and Roman numerals recalled the lettering seen in stacks of worn hardcover books that contained philosophical theory or long revered literature. The clock had awoken an ache within her that pined for a time that she had spent desperately hoping to move beyond. Ultimately, she found herself haunted by the memories within those four walls and every word left unspoken.

From the moment her eyes had gazed up on it, Laura knew she had to have this clock, buying it without a second though.

Upon her return to her humble cottage, Laura had immediately removed all of the pre-existing décor from the walls. Vapid photographs of plant life and arbitrary ornaments were no longer needed to fill the empty spaces on her walls in a half-hearted attempt to create a comforting environment.

Determined to affix the clock to the wall without delay, Laura rummaged for a spare nail and hammer in her home. After an unsuccessful search, she was unwilling to part from the clock so soon, so instead had grabbed a heavy rock from the front garden and wrestled a loose nail from one of the former trinkets that previously rested upon the wall.

It took Laura three tries to get the nail in the wall. She hit her thumb once and put a hole in the dry wall on another attempt. When she went to carefully balance the clock on the nail, it fell to one side, pulled down by its own weight. Scrunching up her nose, Laura stubbornly had tried to shift it back. It slid to the other side. Resolute, she stubbornly collected a roll of duct tape and found success in anchoring the clock to the wall.

Laura sighed as she recalled the details of her acquaintance with the clock. Leaving the soiled mug on the small table, she walked towards the clock so that she came face to face with it. She glanced it over, and smiled at the remnants of glue the duct tape had left behind when she finally secured the clock properly. Her reckless impulses usually left a trace of evidence behind. Her career as an Anthropologist allowed her to come to terms with the fact that humans generally were reckless and impulsive, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. It brought comfort to her reality, a constant reminder of her dogged impulsiveness as a young woman.

It was amazing, Laura thought, how she could be anywhere in this apartment and feel each tick and tock of the seconds marked by the clocks pendulum. Each moment marked echoed loudly inside her chest, painfully striking a chord upon the strings of her heart. To her, this clock created a beautiful harmony of her internal pain that she had carried for decades but had been so detached from. To feel pain, however, was to finally feel something and to Laura, that was beautiful. 

Time had constantly haunted Laura. She had loved and lost her love, for which time was supposed to be endless. Carmilla’s sacrifice to preserve Laura’s mortality, her finite time on earth, weighed heavily upon Laura’s mind for decades. After losing her love, Laura was not remotely interested in living any sort of life. The gaping hole left within her had been so consuming and it took time to realize that to eschew living was to dishonor the sacrifice that Carmilla had made.

So Laura lived. Or so she had tried. 

She forged a career and a living, pursuing the closest thing she could have to a passion. She met people and made friends. No one could fill the emptiness left by her loss. Until Laura had found the clock, she floated by, superficially fulfilling the expectations laid out for society by adults: a home, a steady wage, things to call her own.

A strange silence suddenly pierced the air and Laura gasped. The pendulum was suddenly stationary, no longer swaying back and forth. The ticks and tocks were absent and could no longer resonate within Laura.

She frowned, recalling this happening a few years prior. The timeworn clock was irregular and really needed to be maintained by an expert. She couldn’t part with the object even for a moment, so on the wall it stayed. There was a clasp on the side of the clock’s body and opening it allowed Laura to swing open the glass cover, exposing the clock’s brass face and intricate hands to the cottage’s cool air. Just below the base was a key, which Laura grabbed, and inserted into a small hole cleverly designed into the clock’s face. She twisted the key, winding the clock. The gears groaned as they shifted inside the clock’s body. Laura gave the pendulum a poke and it suddenly swung to life and back to its perfect rhythm.

She sighed contently, placed the key back, and covered the face again. She glanced at the clock one last time before going to rinse out her mug. There wasn’t much left for Laura anymore, but the beauty of this aged clock was enough for the rest of her days.


	2. Carmilla

###  Carmilla

Gazing dark, tired eyes stared at their own reflection on the rippling surface of a small lake. It was overcast and misting rain. A hand reached down and wiped the water’s surface in a half-hearted attempt to erase the reflection of a woman staring back. An ageless, pale face crumpled its nose in disgust and back itself away from the lake’s edge.

The face belonged to a dark haired woman, diminutive in size, with youthful pale skin. She sighed and moved away from the lake to sit upon a log. Her gaze searched past the lake’s far border towards the horizon where the shapes of old architecture. The outlines of the buildings could barely be seen through the fog that had accompanied the misty rain.

Academic buildings that resembled the fortresses of royalty of long ago brought back sad memories for the woman. She had spent many years at a different university, but one that shared a similar appearance from afar. Her most notable time at that university was distinguished by a girl that she had known. A girl that she had loved dearly. Laura.

Laura had passed away earlier in the week. Carmilla had held her hand as Laura’s eyes closed peacefully and the rising her of chest slowed until her breaths came no more. Her breath caught in her throat when she could no longer feel the blood pulsing under Laura’s skin; the music of her heartbeat ceased to be heard to Carmilla. She exhaled mournfully and continued sitting beside the shell of her loved one. Carmilla had remained motionless, still clutching Laura’s hand, until the hospital had made her leave.

Carmilla continued to stare off into the distance, unsuccessfully trying to push away memories of Laura. It was to no avail because she kept coming back to a conversation they had when they were at Silas University.

_“Carm – I’m going to keep aging. Someday I will be older than you. I will die one day.”_

_“I know.”_

_“So. I don’t want that. I want to be with you. For eternity.” Laura’s naive brown eyes were pleading with Carmilla. “I want to become a vampire, too.”_

_Carmilla’s face had become closed off. “No.”_

_“But Carm!”_

_“No. It just…It doesn’t work like that. This isn’t some silly game like you see on television or the movies.”_

_“Well, how does it work? Can you explain it to me.”_

_Carmilla hesitated. “It just…” She sighed, “Being a vampire isn’t a game. It is unpleasant and a curse.”_

_“But you’re a vampire.”_

_“I know. That’s how I know better, Laura.”_

_“But you get to live forever! You get to see the world change! And we could see the world change together! Until it ceases to exist.” She grabbed Carmilla’s hand, looking hopeful. “I don’t want this to end. To change.”_

_“No.” Carmilla’s face had become closed off. “Just. Trust me, please.”_

_“But Carm – “_

_Carmilla stared at Laura; her pained expression silently begged her to please drop the subject. Laura nodded and gave her hand a squeeze. “Okay.”_

Staring at the lake, Carmilla pulled her knees up onto the log before she leaned her forehead against them. She wondered if she had made a mistake sixty years ago.

* * *

All of their friends from Silas had passed within the past ten years; as a result Carmilla no longer had any personal connection to humanity. She knew no one and she didn’t care to. She had no home to return to, few possessions to call her own, and roamed nomadically.

The solitude gave her a lot of time to reflect, but more importantly it gave her more time to avoid reflection. Unfortunately, since Laura’s passing she was finding it more and more difficult to push unpleasant memories out of her consciousness.

There was a day fifty years ago that haunted her daily since; that she spent painfully trying to forget. In the wake of Laura’s death, her internal pain had become a new force within her. It was like an ocean and when the tide was high she was helpless against its strength. Bad memories washed over her, beating relentlessly against her weathered, rocky soul.

_Laura had stood before her beaming behind a white veil. She spun gleefully, a white dress fanning all around her._

_“What do you think?”_

_Carmilla smiled sadly. “You look beautiful. Like always.”_

_Laura blushed and waved her hand dismissingly, “Oh please.” Her face changed to concern and her eyes looked at Carmilla searchingly. “I am really happy you came. I know it wasn’t easy for you. I don’t think I could do this without you.”_

_Carmilla’s face remained neutral and she shrugged. “It wasn’t hard to get here.”_

_“That wasn’t what I meant. Carm…”_

_Carmilla cut her off, “Please don’t.”_

_“Sorry. Carmilla, “ Laura looked sad._

_Carmilla shook her head. “It’s okay. Let’s just…let’s just not talk about it. Here,” she handed Laura a bouquet of flowers. “It’s time,” Carmilla said before she quickly exited the room._

_As she left, Laura’s bridesmaids, their friends from Silas, approached Laura. It was time to marry her person._

Reality hit Carmilla hard and she hugged her legs in closer and let out a muffled cry. A thousand thoughts and regrets raced through her mind. What if she had granted Laura her wish? There was a special bond between a vampire and her maker. Surely if she hadn’t forced Laura to capture girls in a gambit to perpetuate an ancient evil tradition then Laura wouldn’t grow to resent her. Maybe she should have taken Laura’s permission to be selfish.

Ultimately, Carmilla really had not given Laura a choice. She made Laura keep her humanity. With that was the free will to leave and to find someone else; but never really leaving Carmilla. She had known it would be strange for Laura to grow old while Carmilla remained perpetually an eighteen-year-old girl to the eyes of strangers.

Laura had tried to tell her this would become a concern of hers. Carmilla didn’t listen. When the first lines appeared on Laura’s face, she panicked. She didn’t want to grow older than her girlfriend, but to remain enshrined in joint youth. Carmilla had kissed the wrinkles and told her she looked beautiful. That she was jealous, ignoring what Laura was really saying.

Her life had been tied to Laura for so long and for so long she wondered what life beyond Laura’s time would hold for her. Carmilla had never expected to navigate the world alone when Laura had still happily lived within it. After Laura fell in love with someone else, someone mortal, Carmilla had been forced to slowly adjusted to life without her. The day Laura left was the darkest day of her lengthy life. She had understood, but that didn’t lessen the pain. She disappeared for a long time after that, checking in every few years or so; but when Laura’s partner died over ten years ago, she was immediately by her side. There had been no children and really all Laura had left was Carmilla.

When she returned, Carmilla was as in love with Laura as she had ever been. Age had not made Laura any less vivacious, less righteous, or adorably naïve. For ten years Carmilla pretended to be a dutiful granddaughter, taking care of Laura as her body slowly began to fail her. She carried her up the stairs to bed at night; drove her to doctor’s appointments; and became the one to buy the cupcakes. But every day she was reminded of all the time she had missed, leaving Laura as a young woman and returning to her side when she was an old woman. She lamented the missed moments of Laura’s life and it filled her with guilt and regret.

Watching the body of her love slowly decay, preparing her soul for death was made more difficult by all of those missed moments. She had to leave when Laura moved on. She couldn’t linger nearby, as a constant reminder of Laura’s past, it wouldn’t have been fair. She couldn’t watch Laura live with someone who wasn’t her; it would have been more painful. Yet she couldn’t let Laura trade in her humanity for immortality.

 

_One day Laura had caught her gaze and patted her hand, “No, Carm. You were right.”_

_“Was I?”_

_“Yes.”_

Carmilla held onto that exchange as she faced a world without Laura Hollis in it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always a big thanks to my beta crna_macka! I spent a lot of time listening to "Sunny Road" by Emiliana Torrini and "Winter Song" by Head and the Heart while writing this fic amongst many other things. :)

**Author's Note:**

> Big thanks to my beta crna_macka!


End file.
